Distributed computing environments are becoming ever increasingly popular. Usage of the Internet has become especially popular. Typically, a user accesses the Internet from a client computer 10 (FIG. 1) that runs a web browser 14. The web browser includes software that enables a client computer to communicate with servers on the Internet. In most Internet transactions, a user sends a request 16 from the client computer 10 to a server computer 18 that is located on the Internet. The request 16 identifies a web site on the server 18 that the user wishes to access. In response to the request 16, the server 18 returns a copy of a web page 20. In most instances, the web page 20 is in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and includes hyperlinks to other web sites. The web browser 14 includes software for rendering the web page 20 on the client computer 10 so that the user may view the web page.
The above described transaction is performed using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). In HTTP, the request from the client to the server includes the method to be applied to the resource that is requested, an identifier of the resource and the protocol version in use. Thus, for example, a typical request may request a "GET" of a web page that is identified by an identifier (e.g., a uniform resource locator (URL)). The protocol version in the request typically identifies which version of HTFP is being utilized. A URL is a compact string representation for a resource that is available on the Internet. In general, a URL is written as follows: [&lt;scheme&gt;:&lt;scheme-specific-part&gt;]. The &lt;scheme&gt; portion of the URL identifies which scheme is being utilized. Among the better known schemes are File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the Gopher Protocol, Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), USENET News Protocol (News) and the Prospero Directory Service (Prospero).
Perhaps the most popular format of a URL is a URL for the HTTP scheme. An HTTP URL takes the form of http://&lt;host&gt;:&lt;port&gt;/&lt;path&gt;?&lt;searchpart&gt;. The &lt;host&gt; portion may contain a fully qualified domain name of the network host. The &lt;port&gt; portion of the URL identifies a port number to connect to and defaults to 80 if omitted from the URL. The &lt;path&gt; portion of the URL is an HTTP selector. In general, an HTTP selector is a path name. The &lt;searchpart&gt; is a query string that is optional.
As mentioned above, web pages are typically encoded in HTML. HTML is a simple markup language that is used to create Hypertext documents that are platform independent. An HTML document is delimited into elements by tags that specify headings, paragraph lists, links, etc. Most HTML elements are identified in a document by a start tag that gives the element names and attributes, followed by a content, followed by an end tag. Start tags are delimited by "&lt;" and "&gt;". In contrast, end tags are delimited by "&lt;/" and "&gt;". Typically, web browsers include code for translating and rendering HTML documents to a displayable format.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0 is an example of a web browser. It enables a user to access a particular web page by typing the URL for the web page in an Address box. FIG. 2 shows an example of the window 22 for Internet Explorer 2.0 and the associated Address box. The web page contents associated with the URL and the Address box 24 are displayed within the client area 26 of the Internet Explorer window 22. The one difficulty with this mechanism is that users often cannot remember the URL for the web page they seek or enter the URL improperly in the Address box 24. As a result, the associated web page cannot be retrieved and displayed.